Social Media For Newbies Part 4: Specific Lingo/Terms

Here is the tricky and yet most fun part to social media: know the lingo and know the talk. Each platform represents its own language, and it is important to be accustomed to each and be sufficient at each. Here is where you can separate yourself from competitors and truly launch your brand to the next level. This a beginners guide to understanding common social media terms.

Connections: This is kind of like the online version of your business network connections. As a LinkedIn user, these are other users you choose to ‘connect’ with. What can you do if you are a connection in someone’s LinkedIn network? You can view their ‘full’ profile instead of only their ‘public’ profile, you can send them a message in private and share updates with them.

Circles: The community groups that can be built by users on Google+.

Meme: (rhymes with dream) A catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.

Tweets: Short updates or statuses posted on Twitter, limited to 140 characters.

Retweet: The process of a user taking another Twitter user’s tweet and tweeting it themselves. The credit still goes to the original user that tweeted it, but the tweet appears in all the retweeter’s followers’ timeline. This is shortened to ‘RT’ on Twitter.

Widget: A widget is a mini application that performs a specific function and connects to the Internet.

RSS: (Really Simple Syndication)—a web standard for the delivery of content — blog entries, news stories, headlines, images, video — enabling readers to stay current with publications without having to browse to their content.

Tag: It’s a phrase or keyword that is added as an association with a blog, website or social network. Much like keywords, these words and phrases represent what the user is discussing online, and associate the discussion/text with relevant words to aid SEO.

Geotagging: The process of adding geographical identification to media, enabling others to know your location when you do so. Commonly found on smart phone apps for social media like Twitter and Facebook.

Hashtag: It is simply a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to tweets. The creation of a hyperlink on Twitter by placing the # sign in front of a word. This is now a hyperlink that once clicked on performs a search of that word within the Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook & Google+.

Pinning: Pinning is how to show that you like content on Pinterest. Once the content is ‘pinned’, it then appears on your own Pinboard.

Social Graph: A visual representation of the different connections that an individual has within a larger social network.

Social Media Optimization (SMO): It’s about making sure all the content you have, have created or have curated is available across the best media and easy to access by your target audience. Check if it can be subscribed to through RSS. Can a user submit it to Digg? If you shared a video, is it possible to take it and embed it on a site?

Do you think we missed any? Comment below and let us know or tweet us your suggestions.

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